David Gordon Green's Halloween Trilogy review/ Halloween Franchise retrospective/unhinged rant

Part 1: Franchise Overview

John Carpenter’s 1978 film Halloween has had a greater impact on the genre than maybe any other in film history. It spawned a franchise as well as a series of remakes by Rob Zombie and most recently, a reboot trilogy by David Gordon Green and Danny McBride, totaling at a whopping 13 entries, remakes and reboots included. From the simple story to the foreboding autumn atmosphere, what John Carpenter achieved with Halloween is something that thousands upon thousands of horror films have tried and failed to replicate for 44 years. Even in the better installments, the franchise has never been able to recapture the haunting magic of John Carpenter’s original film.

To put it simply, the Halloween franchise is a giant, ridiculous, incomprehensible mess that restarts itself every three or so movies after writing itself into a corner, an embarrassing feat rivaled only by the Terminator series. To steal a Redlettermedia joke, the amount of times the series has just started over makes it feel more like a chose-your-own-adventure game than an actual series of movies like Star Wars or Harry Potter.

The first Halloween was filmed with the intention of being a standalone horror film, a one-and-done concept that doesn’t need to be/should not be explored past one movie (think Jaws, Alien, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, most big horror franchises actually). Unexpectedly, it blew up and was such a success that the studio and producers knew a sequel would be a sure-fire hit, so they made Halloween II with the intention of that being the ending, making the mistake of definitively killing Michael Myers for the first of many times.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (a movie that rocks) is completely unconnected to the first two films in an attempt to turn the franchise into an anthology series after burning Michael Myers to a crisp in Halloween II, but no one liked that, so Halloween IV, V and VI ignore the whole anthology thing that III started and bring Michael Myers back from the dead, along with the introduction of a cult that controls Michael Myers (???). As a whole, the last leg of the first run of Halloween movies, (unofficially called the “Thorn Trilogy” after the cult) is probably my least favorite of the franchise. They do a surprisingly good job creating the fall atmosphere that I think is integral to these movies working, but they feel so cheap and lame, as well as very derivative of the Friday the 13th franchise, which is ironic considering how the first Friday the 13th movie is openly a Halloween rip-off.

After the Thorn Trilogy proved to be a train wreck, the last three entries were deleted from the timeline in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, which yes, is a terribly clunky title. As bad as its title is, H20 is slightly better than the last few movies and has a pretty solid ending but gets completely ruined by Halloween: Resurrection in 2002, which is possibly the worst of the bunch, ending the second run of Halloween movies on the weakest note imaginable.

Five years later, Rob Zombie took a stab (ha ha ha) at a remake and then a sequel in 2009, both of which are pretty bad on their own merits but I can commend him for attempting to have a new interpretation of the story instead of making a dull-ass, generic, 2010 Nightmare on Elm Street-style piece of shit. As Halloween movies, they don’t work for me at all, especially the first one, since it adds 45 minutes of backstory for why Michael kills, as well as having the “Michael and Laurie are related” thing baked into it from the get-go. However, as slasher movies without the context of being a Halloween movie, they work just fine, I guess.

Part 2: Halloween (2018)

40 years after the original film, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green’s 2018 Halloween reboot/legacy-sequel wiped the slate clean, wisely ignoring the timeline of events from Halloween II to Halloween: Resurrection. No more twist where Laurie and Michael are siblings, no more stupid cult, no more Busta Rhymes, none of it. This was definitely the smartest decision to make with this reboot trilogy work: cutting out all the stupid shit and taking it back to the fundamentals of what worked about Halloween in the first place. If there is one thing that I think the 2018 movie improves upon from the 1978, it would be that it utilizes the setting of the holiday a lot more. The original film has that great October vibe to it, but the characters in it don’t do anything specific to the holiday, making it feel more like a random Friday night in October or November than Halloween night itself. It’s not a problem that ruins my experience watching it, obviously, especially since it is likely due to budget constraints as well as being filmed during summer instead of autumn. In the 2018 film however, they’re going to parties, people are constantly walking around the neighborhood trick or treating, and it really feels like it is Halloween night.

Despite its many flaws, I really enjoy Green’s Halloween. While the plot is standard and the directing is a step-down from John Carpenter’s, I think it excels in the aspects necessary to make a movie about Michael Myers killing people work; it keeps it simple, it’s atmospheric and it has plenty of brutal deaths, making it a very enjoyable and exciting horror movie, especially in a crowd setting. Until Halloween Ends, it’s the closest a sequel had come to recapturing the unnerving tone of the first film since Halloween II, thanks in large part to John Carpenter’s score. His remastering of classic tracks as well as brand new ones is nothing short of astonishing, each track bringing the appropriate punch for any scene in the movie.

Michael Myers is an effectively intimidating and threatening antagonist for the first time since 1978. Not only are his violent actions blunt and disturbing, but his mannerisms and body language in the stiff way he walks, how he looks around slowly, and within seconds shifts from motionless to agile movements is appropriately inhuman and off-putting. For decades, doctors have been attempting to figure out Michael Myers, mirroring how audiences and pop culture have been fascinated by him for almost half a century. However, life in Haddonfield has moved on, and the only person who still cares about Michael Myers, aside from medical professionals and true crime enthusiasts, is Laurie, whose entire life was derailed by the traumatic events of the 1978 film, and has consumed her entire life.

The writing is mostly just serviceable, but I think the movie does a solid job of conveying the loneliness that Laurie has suffered due to Michael’s actions, and the ripple effects of generational trauma that it has caused her daughter and granddaughter. It’s not delved into terribly deeply, but it does enough to let the viewer know that the creators have at least put thought into the story they are telling.

There is one line that gets under my skin, where Laurie calls Michael “The Shape,” despite that being what a lot of people call him since that’s what he is listed as in the credits, as far as I can remember he’s not referred to as that in the actual 1978 movie, and it feels like the real-world discourse surrounding him unintentionally creeping into the reboot. But that’s obviously a minor nitpick. I’m okay with the way that fan-service is incorporated into the story is pretty interesting, since most of it is twisting and subverting visuals from the original. I particularly like how there are many parts of the movie, the climax in particular, that are the inverse of the ending of the original Halloween, making it a great companion-piece to bookend the 1978 film, and is one of the handful of legacy-sequels that I actually really enjoy.

Part 3: Halloween Kills (2021)

Where the 2018 movie had me convinced that the franchise was finally in the hands of creators who understood what worked about the story, Halloween Kills goes back on all of it in such a blatant way that it genuinely makes me wonder what Green and McBride were even attempting to do and say with Halloween. The town has moved on from what Michael Myers did and Laurie is completely alone in her trauma? Nope! Suddenly, everyone in Haddonfield simply cannot stop talking about how much Michael Myers has terrorized and traumatized them all, forming a Simpsons-esque angry mob to hunt him down. Laurie has to learn that Michael Myers’s attack on her was completely random and lingering on it for her whole life has led to nothing but misery for her whole family? Nope! Laurie and her family vow to keep hunting Michael Myers despite being safe from him in a hospital surrounded by cops and security, going so far as to reinforce the notion that there is some spiritual connection between the two of them. Keeping in line with the simple story and tone that the original movie established? Nope! Now there’s an extra dozen or so characters all going on separate side-quests that make the movie so all over the place that it has no sense of plot progression from beginning to end.

The town-wide scope of chaos and crowds of townsfolk being driven to madness makes the movie feels more akin to Titanic than it does a Halloween movie. I don’t blame them for trying to do something a bit more ambitious with the second installment, but it feels like a plot line that could have worked if it had been the culmination of events in the final installment of the trilogy. Here, it’s pulled off in such a clunky and self-important way that it makes the movie feel more like a waste of time than an escalation of tension.

Where the fan-service in Halloween was mostly respectful and reserved, Halloween Kills cranks up the references in a desperate attempt to drum-up unearned nostalgic emotion. The movie digs up side-characters and actors from the 1978 movie and awkwardly crams them into the movie only to repeat their iconic lines and then be dispatched without any characterization. There is no reason for those characters to be those characters aside from an unnecessary amount of reverence for every minute detail of the 1978 movie.

Even though I think this movie is terrible, I’d be lying if I said there was absolutely nothing redeemable about it. The movie begins with a 70s recreation scene about how Michael Myers got captured in 1978. I really like this scene, but it is probably the only part of the movie that feels in line with its predecessor, along with John Carpenter’s score, which is still really good, as well as the opening credit scene. It feels like a delightful Halloween fan-film that was stapled onto a really bad Halloween sequel. Michael Myers is still an effective villain, and there are some memorable kill sequences but there are so many of them that after the seventh of almost 30 deaths, it starts to get monotonous and boring.

Aside from a handful of memorable kills and a well-done opening scene, Halloween Kills is a pretentious, repetitive amorphous blob of a movie. If you view this and other horror franchises like WWE and you get a boner watching your favorite slasher villain butcher people with no regard for any other aspect of plot, character writing, pacing, story structure, direction, or pretty much anything else that makes movies work, Halloween Kills might be the movie for you. Unfortunately, I do care about those things and am not going to hand-wave it because “oh it’s just a slasher movie, it doesn’t have to actually be good!” because you know what else is a slasher movie where the plot, character writing, pacing, story structure, direction and pretty much everything else that makes a movie work are really fantastic? THE ORIGINAL HALLOWEEN! After liking Halloween Ends as much as I did, it’s possible that in a few years it could become a guilty pleasure, but only time will tell.

Part 4: Halloween Ends (2022)

Finally, in 2022, the most recent run of Halloween movies is now complete. I thought that there was no was the trilogy could redeem itself after the second installment, but it actually turned itself around in a pretty big way. The annoying “legacy” aspect of this legacy sequel is luckily very, veryyyy minimal. If you go into this movie wanting it to be the final showdown between Michael Myers and Laurie Strode and it’ll be full of epic, insane, Halloween Kills-levels of absurd gore and violence while characters babble on endlessly about how important of a franchise this is and the legacy of the characters, or if you got a boner during Halloween Kills when Michael shoved a fluorescent light through that lady’s throat, you will not like this movie, because “oh no, Michael Myers isn’t back AGAIN, to do the exact same thing he’s done in 17 other movies AGAIN!”

Halloween Ends is an actual movie, with an actual plot, with actual characters that change and grow as the movie progresses, with actual themes that get developed. Instead of keeping with the single-night gimmick that the first two had set up, Halloween Ends takes place 4 years after Michael’s rampage through Haddonfield. After seemingly completing his goal of returning home for whatever stupid reason at the end of Halloween Kills, Michael Myers has vanished off the face of the Earth. Laurie has been living with her granddaughter, both now in a place of healing and contentment after the years of trauma.

Where Laurie first embodied the negative energy and trauma that had been afflicted by Michael Myers, in Ends, that energy has creeped out and infected the entire town after the events of Halloween Kills. When Allyson, Laurie’s granddaughter, befriends Corey Cunningham, a babysitter who accidentally killed the young boy he was watching, her and Laurie attempt to help him process his trauma in a healthy way. After Michael has vanished, the town is looking for any possible scapegoat to blame for the pain that’s been inflicted on them, and Corey becomes that scapegoat. I love the idea that the evil that lives inside Michael Myers being transferred into someone else, showcasing how the evil that inhabits Michael transcends him and never really goes away or dies, infecting the town around them in a very David Lynch type of way. As the movie progresses, Corey becomes more unhinged as the town rejects his attempts to reintegrate into society, forcing him to find a kinship with Michael Myers instead of Laurie and Allyson. I really like the part where Allyson is talking to the father of the kid who Corey accidentally killed, who says that when he recently saw Corey and decided to offer him a car ride as a gesture of forgiveness, he looked into Corey’s eyes and saw only darkness, just like how Dr. Loomis described meeting 6-year-old Michael Myers. There’s a great nature vs nurture contrast between how Dr. Loomis saw evil in Michael from the get-go, and how Corey’s environment caused evil to fester inside of him.

I really enjoyed James Jude Courtney’s performance as Michael Myers in the first two installments of the reboot trilogy, but I’m gonna say it: Michael Myers is not terribly interesting as a character. He works great in the one-off way that the shark from Jaws works. He’s the boogeyman, and that’s all you need to know about him. No room for longevity with the character. The more mythology you add to him, the less scary he becomes. The character was so overdone in the last movie that there was nowhere to go but either double down on the insane amount of carnage and be as much of a boring nightmare as Halloween Kills, or go in a completely new direction with the story. Luckily for David Gordon Green and co., the decision to Halloween III the situation and make a weird little movie was the best thing it could make. Everyone else seems to hate it, but I really like it so good work guys.

The lack of Michael Myers in the final installment in the franchise is bound to annoy a lot of viewers, and it’s probably going to overshadow any other aspect of the movie, but it was a welcome surprise for me. After two kill-fests where a comically overpowered Michael Myers butchers between 40 and 50 people, a more slowly paced, moody movie where the primary antagonist is some random dork named Corey, and Michael Myers kills a total of maybe three or four people is just what I needed to send off this trilogy and franchise overall.

I almost wish that Michael Myers was even less involved in the movie, maybe even not at all, because outside of being a catalyst for Corey’s dark turn, his involvement in the ending of the movie is pretty tacked on. Even though the ending battle between Michael and Laurie kind of made me roll my eyes because it felt like studio notes, I didn’t hate it. It’s 90% one of the best Halloween sequels and 10% silly studio interference shenanigans. This was an appropriate send-off to Jamie Lee Curtis and her character, as well as a satisfying, slightly unintentionally comical end for Michael Myers. Despite that, I’m sure within 10 years they’ll find some stupid reason for him to come back to life despite being turned into literal ground beef at the end of this movie.

Even though I have had four years to let the 2018 movie sit with me, I think Halloween Ends is probably my favorite of the new trilogy already. David Gordon Green’s direction is definitely at its best here, where the presentation of the first two felt a little more thrown together, especially in comparison to the ones where John Carpenter was involved. The style and pacing of the movie come together perfectly to create a wonderful, moody October movie that stylistically feels very in line with its predecessors from the 70s and 80s. The themes of infectious trauma are a lot more well developed this time around than in the previous two installments, as well as the themes of rebirth, change and transforming into something new. The vibes are ominous and spooky, the editing is crisp, and once again, John Carpenter’s music is phenomenal.

Overall, I really enjoy David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy. Storytelling-wise, it’s without a doubt pretty clunky, but it’s the Halloween franchise we’re talking about here so a bit of wonky storytelling comes with the territory. The first two-thirds of it go in one direction and the third in a completely different one that hadn’t been set up at all in the prior two, making it feel pretty disjointed as an overarching narrative. But honestly, it doesn’t bother me that much. The mythology that Kills sets up with Michael Myers is more satisfying with the added hindsight that Ends offers. If there is one thing I can say about Halloween Ends that I was not expecting, it is that it would give me a somewhat positive new perspective on the overall purpose of Halloween Kills. While the first reboot felt like a modern update of the same story and the 2021 film an excessive extension of that movie, the pacing and style of the 2022 film is the most in line with Carpenter’s original Halloween movie. The direction Halloween Ends took worked for me to the point where I wish the entire trilogy were more like this. The longer it sits with me, the more I like it and look forward to re-watching it next October.

Part 5: Pop culture has broken many brains

To go off on another tangent, I’d like to talk a little bit about how pop culture has warped the original 1978 classic Halloween. After scrolling through reviews on Letterboxd and specifically horror movie TikTok, it seems to me that a lot of people only like this movie because they know it’s one of those movies that they are supposed to like it. Why is it that whenever I see people on TikTok rank the series, they seem to have a more detailed thoughts and positive things to say about some of the sequels, and then have the original at the #1 spot and say “it’s a classic,” or “it started it all etc.”? It seems to get a lot of automatic 10/10, A+ or 5 star ratings because of how it started the slasher trend, (despite not being the first slasher movie) and not any aspect of the actual movie. Like I said when talking about Halloween Kills, it seems like what a lot of fans want is just to see Michael Myers butcher people, but the 1978 movie doesn’t really have a whole lot of Michael Myers butchering people. It has about as much of that as Halloween Ends, and fans seem to fuckin’ hate it, so what is it that people like about Halloween?

The pop culture aspect of classic franchise movies like this has always baffled me. Jurassic Park, Ghostbusters, Star Wars, Halloween, and dozens were never intended to be epic pop culture phenomena that would have a sequel, remake or reboot based off of it made at least once every ten years for the rest of time. But that’s exactly what happened to them. Halloween went from a simple, self-contained movie about some guy that escapes a mental hospital and kills a few people to one of the most profitable horror franchises in recent years. This perception of Halloween as a cultural landmark no doubt has elevated the otherwise extremely simple film into Star Wars territory of cultural awareness. It never had the legs to be an ongoing franchise like Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street, but Halloween is nevertheless held in a much higher regard than either of them. What about Halloween is so attractive to filmmakers and audiences, but is so unattainable?

As much as I like Halloween II, the 2018 reboot and Halloween Ends, they lack what Halloween had because all of them are stuck between being a movie on their own merits and trying to live up to the original film. A film that, like I said before, was never intended to be anything other than a horror movie. It’s a very good standalone horror movie, one of my favorites, but I think it’s a movie that gets given a lot more weight than it was ever intended to have due to its pop culture status as one of the best horror movies ever made. I’m certainly not immune to this line of thinking, I have my own interpretation of what Michael Myers is and what his motives are, but it’s important to remember what the original intentions of the filmmakers were when making the movie in the first place.

Part 6: Halloween (1978)

Halloween is a movie that is so beautifully directed that its captivating atmosphere radiates from every frame of the movie. Even though this isn’t John Carpenter’s first movie, I always associate it with being his debut because it’s really where he hit his stride, marking the beginning of a decade-long run of fantastic, classic movies. He does a fantastic job of framing shots in a way that keeps your attention on exactly what it needs to be focused on. The shot composition, editing and music are so fucking perfect for creating that chilly sense of dread that slowly escalates as Michael gets closer to Laurie. The story is simple and executed perfectly and holy shit, that ending is fucking perfect. It is an absolutely brilliant ending for a movie that should never have had any sequels.

It’s so well put-together despite being very low budget that its tension and pacing is enough to build anticipation for the horror, and has no need to rely on gory kill scenes. The fear comes from the extremely simple and frightening idea of being watched, or having your house broken into, or looking out your window and seeing someone in your yard staring at you, or finding a dead body, or thinking that someone in your house isn’t who they actually are. Who is Michael Myers? He’s evil in “the shape” of a person. He’s someone or something that wants to kill you and you don’t know why. Why does he kill? Who knows. You don’t need to know. Why can’t he be killed? He’s the boogeyman. Who is Laurie? She’s you. Why does he attack Laurie? No discernable reason. He just decides to, and the vagueness of his motivation is what makes it scary. Boom, perfect, that’s all you need. Halloween II adding the dumb twist about Michael Myers being Laurie Strode’s long-lost stepbrother is probably the worst decision it could’ve made. I think that the reboot trilogy’s decision to remove that plot-point from its canon was the best way to get back to the series roots.

On top of the atmosphere, it’s a very interpretable movie, giving it an air of mystery that sequels inherently cannot have due to the expectation of answers that comes along with expanding upon a story. My personal interpretation of why Michael kills is that he is consumed by the essence of Halloween itself, compelled to kill and create a spectacle of his victims by turning them into gruesome Halloween decorations in his weird shrine to his past murders. The fact that he is pure evil and his lack of empathy makes him powerful. (I do like the mythology that the reboot trilogy adds where the more he kills, the more powerful he becomes, basically going down to zero in Halloween Ends after maxing out his abilities in Halloween Kills.) The only thing that can keep you safe is by participating in the holiday and going trick or treating, because he doesn’t kill kids or adults who are wearing Halloween costumes (until Halloween Kills kind of fucked up that last part of the interpretation).

Part 7: Halloween (discussion) Ends

In conclusion, after this long, rambling mess of an essay about a really bad franchise, Halloween III: Season of the Witch is the best Halloween sequel because it doesn’t try to be one. No Michael Myers stabbing people, Laurie Strode screaming and running or Dr. Loomis being a really bad psychiatrist, just John Carpenter’s brilliant score, an impeccable autumn vibe and a bizarre, nearly incomprehensible plot about TV turning children’s heads into bugs. Delightful! I really, really wish that the sequels following it kept with the anthology angle instead of playing it safe by bringing back Michael Myers. For a series that started so many trends in the horror genre, it’s a shame that it eventually devolves into being another one of the endless number of movies that ripped it off.

As for which timeline I pick as head-canon for the chose-your-own-adventure story that is the Halloween series, I’m not sure. If I had to pick, it would be either Halloween II or the reboot trilogy to watch every October for the rest of my life. But here’s the thing: Despite liking them, the stylistic presentation of the reboot trilogy is so different from the 1978 movie for the most part that it is impossible to compartmentalize them into being in the same universe in my head. And I dislike the siblings twist in Halloween II so much that it damn near ruins the entire movie for me. Maybe I could do 1978, 2018 and 2022 as my own little trilogy since Halloween Ends kind of proved how big a waste of time Halloween Kills was.

Fuck it, it’s just the 1978 movie and Halloween III in my head-canon as the two sole entries in the Halloween anthology franchise. Maybe one day I’ll revisit the Rob Zombie movies, Thorn Trilogy or the H20 timeline, but eh, I don’t feel a need to anytime this decade.

Okay I’m done have a great Halloween bye-bye.